Modern human rights discourse rests on the assumption that individual and inalienable rights are natural and universal. Linked to this is the assertion that only appeals to universal human rights can protect against both tyrannical power and cultural justifications of violence such as imagined ethnic supremacy or sectarian religious intolerance. But on closer examination these claims can be exposed as myths that mask a much more sinister reality – the collusion of political absolutism and cultural relativism.

Since the US Declaration of Independence and the French revolution, the two most basic rights are freedom of choice and the right to the quest for happiness. But in exercising their individual inalienable right to freedom of choice and to the pursuit of pleasure, people necessarily alienate or surrender to the state and the market original natural rights like self-protection or self-sustenance.

Paradoxically, supposedly inalienable rights to individual freedom and personal property support an absolutist regime to which everyone delegates sovereignty precisely because such a regime secures those rights against any internal or external threat. This logic is exemplified by the absolute power of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan that underpins the idea of fully sovereign modern states wherein "bare individuals" are subordinate to centralised authority.

Likewise, the inalienable right to self-ownership (as defended by John Locke) is paradoxically compatible with any actual form of bondage on the marketplace. Indeed, the idea that body and mind are matters of private possession legitimates the free production and trade of goods and services, including violent computer games and pornography – provided there is consent.

But to equate individual freedom of choice with personal consent merely begs the question, since both are grounded in the idea of sovereign will. But where there is only volition (and no substantive shared norms or moral codes), conflicts are arbitrated either by the power of the state (and the market) – as for atheists – or by references to absolute divine will – as for religious fanatics. So militant atheism and religious fundamentalism are merely two variants of the same absolutist politics.

Similarly, appeals to human rights are entirely compatible with cultural relativism. Either secular state guarantees to protect the freedom of conscience present little more than tolerating belief or religious faith as a matter of private taste and personal opinion – void of any universal validity or significance. In that case, the exercise of individual of sovereign will – backed by absolute state-market power – produces what Pope Benedict XVI has so eloquently described as the "dictatorship of relativism that does not recognise anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires".

Or else the secular state enforces its own norms and standards upon all groups and belief systems. In that case, the liberal promise of equality amounts to little more than the secular imposition of sameness – forcing UK-based Catholic adoption agency to promote adoption for homosexual couples or face closure. In either case, the human rights discourse is unable to recognise religions in their own right or grant them their proper autonomy.

The fundamental problem with modern human rights discourse is that it reduces all rights to subjective rights granted to, and exercised, by freely choosing individuals – an entirely circular logic that brackets questions about the source of rights and practical ethical guidance for their exercise.

By contrast, Christianity and other religious traditions offer an alternative account. If rights are seen as actually objective rather than exclusively subjective, then they are not merely grounded in individuals but relate to a wider political, socio-economic and cultural order that mirrors objective reality. Such an order is primarily composed of individuals organised in groups and associations – rather than ruled by the market-state or a theocratic regime.

This also suggests that there are objective "rights and wrongs" that concern relations between persons and things, even if "rights and wrongs" are always open to contest and debate. For instance, political discussions about rights privilege notions of unilateral entitlement at the expense of reciprocal responsibility and duty. Instead of state-administrative or economic-contractual relations, Christianity links reciprocity to gift-exchange, charity and a universal community beyond social, ethnic or national divisions.

Likewise, the exercise of rights that are objective is not just a matter of individual ability or capacity but also of collective capabilities in the pursuit of shared ends – the common good in which all can share, rather than exclusively private profit or state power. As such, justice is – or should be – predominantly about a proper ordering of relationships within society, not the imposition of abstract foundational principles or the application of positive prescriptions based on law.

Crucially, justice is not simply a question of socio-economic fairness or equality of opportunity – as most politicians claim. Much rather, justice is about a fair share in the distribution of material and non-material resources which can provide a proper pattern of relationships.

Public debates about abortion or the legitimate use of torture won't be resolved by appeals to human rights alone. What is also required is a sense of the sacred, the absolute sanctity of life and strict taboos against violation. The biblical notion that we are all created "in the image and likeness of God" can help link the sacredness of life to objective rights and their exercise for shared ends. Without religion, references to universal human rights will ring increasingly hollow.